Teaching Students to Become Self-Determined Learners

Michael Wehmeyer, Yong Zhao

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781416628965
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

Children are born learning machines who want to learn and can organize and manage their own learning. Unfortunately, today children have little choice over what they do in school and how and when they do it. Children prepared in this "other-determined" manner will be poorly equipped to navigate an adult world requiring that they act autonomously and self-direct learning to acquire skills in rapidly changing environments.

In Teaching Students to Become Self-Determined Learners, Michael Wehmeyer and Yong Zhao explore the how and why of self-determined learning—which emphasizes autonomy and choice, turning over ownership for learning to students by supporting them in engaging in activities that are of personal value to them, thus enabling them to act volitionally. You'll learn* How to promote self-determined learning in your classroom or school
* The importance of autonomy supports, competence supports, and relatednesssupports
* Conditions that enable self-determined learning
* Teaching strategies for self-determined learning
* Assessment strategies in self-determined learning
* The role of technology in self-determined living

The practical strategies, case studies, advice, and resources here will help you help your students to motivate themselves and become self-determined learners

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Chapter 1

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The Missing Actor in Education

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"Perhaps children don't need another reform imposed on them. Instead, they need to be the authors of their own education," wrote Williams College psychology professor Susan Engel in an op-ed piece published in The New York Times (2011). Engel, a prolific writer on child development and education, reached this conclusion after following the unusual learning journeys of eight high school students at Monument Mountain Regional High School in western Massachusetts. These students designed and ran their own school within a public high school for an entire semester. During the semester, the students followed their own curriculum, without taking other classes. Although they sought advice from English, math, and science teachers, they were primarily responsible for their own learning, monitoring each other's work, and providing feedback to one another. There were no grades, although the students wrote evaluations of each other. They called their program the Independent Project.

The Independent Project was initiated in 2010 by Samuel Levin, then a student at Monument, at the encouragement of his mother. "Why don't you just make your own school?" she responded when Levin complained to her about how unhappy he and his classmates were about their high school experiences, recounts Time magazine writer Alexandria Sifferlin (2013).

So he did.

When he was in the ninth grade, Samuel began with a schoolwide garden tended solely by students. The students showed so much commitment to the garden that some got up early on Saturdays to work with the plants. The level of commitment he found in his classmates to nurture something they had created themselves convinced Levin that the students were capable of more—perhaps even managing their own schooling. "I saw the really amazing and powerful things that happened when high school students stepped it up and were excited about something," Levin said of his experience with the garden project (Sifferlin, 2013).

Levin talked with his school guidance counselor, Mike Powell, about his idea to create a school that would be run by students. Powell extended his support and worked with Levin to get the endorsement of the school principal and superintendent. Amid some pushback from faculty and parents, the school's Curriculum Steering Committee and the board approved the proposed program, and the experiment began in 2010.

The Independent Project proved to be a huge success, at least in terms of the experience of the students who were involved. "The results of their experiment have been transformative," observed Engel. Students who were on the verge of dropping out of school became obsessed with learning. Students who struggled in the conventional classroom flourished in their own school. The project worked well for all kinds of students. "Students, regardless of their previous grades, all produced impressive, substantial, and authentic work," wrote Milton Chen, founding executive director of the George Lucas Education Foundation. "They also learned valuable skills of time management and helping classmates with constructive criticism" (2014).

The Independent Project was even more successful as an education experiment in terms of impact and influence. By all accounts, it was a small endeavor: eight students being allowed to manage their own learning for one semester out of their 12 years, or 24 semesters, in their school careers. The idea was fairly simple and straightforward: let the students own their learning.

The project has caught the attention of many. Stories of the project have appeared in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time, as well as influential education media such as Edutopia, KQED Mindshift, and the website Public School Review. The project was featured in the popular education documentary Beyond Measure: The Revolution Starts Now (Abeles, 2015). A short video about the project went viral on YouTube, with more than 200,000 views since it was posted in 2013. The project was the central topic of a book coauthored by Samuel Levin and Susan Engel published in 2016—A School of Our Own: The Story of the First Student-Run High School and a New Vision for American Education. The project has also inspired many parents, educators, and students to start their own Independent Project. The school and Levin have received countless e-mails and visits from people interested in emulating the project.

The success of the Independent Project was the result of growing dissatisfaction with conventional education. It seems to be an answer to the many widely recognized problems of education as it is practiced in most of our schools. It also seems to be an indictment of the numerous failed efforts initiated by governments to improve education. It indicates a new direction for educational change.

Dissatisfaction with Conventional Education

There is widespread dissatisfaction with current education practices among students, parents, and the public in almost every country in the world. This dissatisfaction is rooted in a number of widely recognized and documented problems. Chief among them are the persistent education achievement and attainment gaps among students of different backgrounds, the widespread disengagement of students with schooling, and the unpreparedness of children for a world being rapidly shaped by technological advances.

Left Behind: The Achievement Gap

It is no secret that current education does not serve all children equally well. Vast inequalities exist in education today, as demonstrated by the persistent chasm in academic achievement among different groups of children. Children's family backgrounds play a significant role in their educational achievement. In other words, the socioeconomic conditions into which children are born to a large extent determine their educational outcomes.

In the United States, for instance, children of color and from low-income families have, on average, performed worse than Caucasian children and children from high-income families on virtually all indicators of academic success: standardized test scores, high school graduation rates, and college matriculation rates (Bailey & Dynaski, 2011; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Duncan & Murnane, 2011; Ford & Grantham, 2003; Fryer & Levitt, 2004; Hansen, Levesque, Quintero, & Valant, 2018; Plucker, Hardesty, & Burroughs, 2013; Reardon, 2011). Children's academic performance also varies along geographical lines, with children in certain geographical regions doing better than their counterparts in other regions. Similar gaps exist in other educational systems around the world (Byun & Kim, 2010; OECD, 2016; Zhang & Zhao, 2014).

The natural conditions with which children are born also play a significant role in determining their educational outcomes. Children are born with different intellectual capacities, personalities, and desires (Gardner, 1983; John, Robins, & Pervin, 2008; Reiss, 2000; Sternberg, 1988; Zhao, 2018a, 2018b). These natural-born differences lead to different fates in schools and, in turn, outcomes, because certain attributes are favored and others discouraged in the current education system. The favored attributes contribute to educational success and those children with such attributes do well in schools and enjoy better educational outcomes. Children with less-favored attributes do not fit in the current education system and are deemed failures (Clark, 2016; Zhao, 2012, 2018b). The result is the vast academic achievement gap among children—some become straight-A students with excellent test scores and go on to prestigious colleges, and some cannot even achieve the grades or scores to graduate from high school; some move quickly ahead of others and are placed in gifted and talented programs, while some struggle to even keep pace and are identified to receive special or remedial education.

The first kind of achievement gap, the one associated with children's socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity, has received much attention. It has been accepted as a result of social injustice and economic inequality. It also has been recognized as a matter of grave social and economic consequences if left unaddressed. As a result, closing this achievement gap has been on the mind of many governments in recent decades. In fact, the majority of recent reform efforts launched by governments around the world have targeted the achievement gap linked to poverty and race/ethnicity.

The latter gap (the one associated with differences in talents, interests, and personality) has been largely ignored. Worse, it has been accepted as normal and an expected outcome of education. In other words, the gap is intentional because education, as a sorting mechanism, is intended to differentiate individuals and select them for different opportunities and places in a meritocracy (Zhao, 2016b, 2018b). Consequently, apart (perhaps) from students receiving special education services, children who are not served well by conventional education are simply considered underperforming students. The problem, in other words, is seen as the child and not the education system itself. For far too many parents and students, this gap is a source of dissatisfaction and misery (Clark, 2016). There is increasing recognition that these students are victims of current education practices, and there is growing interest in changing pedagogical practices to meet the needs of diverse learners, resulting in the recent growth of differentiated education, personalized learning, and individualized learning.

The Miserable: Disengagement and Emotional Cost

Another source of dissatisfaction is student disengagement. Many students are not actively engaged with learning in schools. In the United States, the 2017 Gallup Student Poll found that less than half of students are engaged, while nearly a quarter of students are actively disengaged, and another 29 percent are moderately disengaged. The numbers are about the same as in the previous year. The same survey found that only 20 percent of students said that they did not miss school at all in the previous year without a good reason or because they were sick, while nearly 30 percent said they missed school a lot or some. In Australia, a study found that about 40 percent of students are unproductive in a given year (Goss & Sonnemann, 2017).

Another sign of disengagement is dropping out of school. Many students choose to leave school before completion. In the United States, for example, more than one million students drop out of school each year without earning a diploma (Washor & Mojkowski, 2014). About six percent of American high school students dropped out in 2016.

In addition to disengagement, many experience negative emotions about school. According to 2015 results of the largest international education survey, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), more than half the world's 15-year-olds reported feeling very anxious about taking tests and a slightly lower percentage of students reported that they get tense about studying. The same study found that more than a quarter of students do not have a sense of belonging at school (OECD, 2017).

Students are also extremely bored in school. They are "bored out of their minds" (Jason, 2017). The Gallup Youth Survey conducted in 2004 asked teens to select the top three words to describe their feelings in school; half of them chose "bored" and 42 percent chose "tired." Only two percent reported having never been bored in school.

The issues of student disengagement, dropout, anxiety, boredom, and general social, psychological, and emotional well-being have been frequently reported and discussed. They have grave consequences for the students themselves as they go through school, and as adults when they leave school. Consequently, they have serious economic and social consequences for society. Thus, not surprisingly, educators, parents, and policymakers have been frustrated with the failure of educational institutions to engage children in productive activities, provide more engaging experiences, and offer an environment that promotes social, psychological, and emotional well-being in all students (Feldman, Smith, & Waxman, 2017; Gleason, 2017; Washor & Mojkowski, 2014).

The Unprepared: The Talent Mismatch

Another major source of dissatisfaction with education today is its failure to prepare children for a world that has been and will continue to be transformed. It is widely recognized that today's schools are not adequately equipping children with the skills and qualities needed for the future, resulting in a talent mismatch. In other words, the skills and knowledge schools expect children to master are not what the future world needs, and what the future world needs is not being taught in schools.

Education is always in a race with technology (Goldin & Katz, 2008). Gradual technological advances accumulate into a revolution and transform civilization. Such transformation often leads societies to reconsider the value of previously prescribed skills and knowledge. Different societies value different skills and knowledge. What is useful and desirable in one society may not be equally useful or desirable in another. Likewise, what is useful and desirable in the past may become obsolete in the future. Thus, throughout history, societies have engaged in exercises to define and redefine human qualities worth cultivating in schools, especially during times of significant change (Broudy, 1982; Goldin & Katz, 2008).

We are in the midst of major societal change. Starting in the 1970s, waves of technological advancement have led to massive societal transformations that ushered in the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions (Schwab, 2015), or the Second Machine Age (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014). Unlike the first rounds of industrialization, the Fourth Industrial Revolution features "smart" machines, or artificial intelligence (AI), and AI-based automation, as well as global networks of things (Executive Office of the President, 2016; Schwab, 2015). These "smart" machines have already brought about disruptive changes and will continue to do so in the future.

Some of the knowledge and skills cultivated by traditional education have been increasingly rendered less valuable or even obsolete by "smart" machines (Pink, 2006; Wagner, 2008, 2012; Zhao, 2012). The goals of technological development are to enhance and extend human abilities, to make human beings more effective and more efficient, help human beings perform tasks that would otherwise be impossible, and free people from mundane, harmful, and dangerous tasks. Over the past two centuries, technology has significantly increased human productivity, extended human capabilities, and freed more humans from mundane and dangerous tasks. A collateral effect is the disappearance of traditional production-line jobs and displacement of some human workers. This occurs because machines have been increasingly equipped with the same knowledge, skills, and other human qualities to perform tasks previously performed by human beings. In fact, machines are much superior to human beings for some tasks, and very often machines cost much less, are consistently obedient, and can work longer hours without complaint than human beings. Machines have gradually taken the jobs schools have traditionally prepared human beings to perform, rendering the prescribed qualities less useful and desirable.

Rote memorization, information processing, and repetitive procedure knowledge are among the first to be rendered less useful by recent information and communication technologies. For example, the best Jeopardy! and chess players in the world are computers, demonstrating the superiority of machines' capacity for information storage and processing. Traditionally valued low-level cognitive skills are easily replaceable by machines, as are traditionally valued and machinelike qualities such as following instructions and obeying orders without questioning (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014; Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2011; European Communities, 2006; Frankiewicz, 2019; Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2007; World Economic Forum, 2016). At the same time, the Second Machine Age (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014) has created opportunities for traditionally undervalued talents to become valuable. For example, when jobs that require rote memorization disappear, the number of jobs requiring higher-order thinking such as creativity increases. As a result, as the manufacturing class declines, the creativity class rises (Florida, 2012). When jobs that favor so-called "left-brain" skills such as linear and logical thinking are automated, the "right-brained"-based talents become more useful and desirable (Pink, 2006).

More importantly, increased productivity brings about more leisure time and disposable income, which allows human beings to expand their consumption beyond physical necessities (Zhao, 2012). Whereas underdeveloped countries must focus on basic survival (e.g., food, clean water, shelter, basic medicine), humans in technologically developed economies are able to invest in the psychological, aesthetic, intellectual, and social needs of its populace. Thus, in developed economies, education, entertainment, health care, travel, fashion, beauty, and other industries that serve psychological, intellectual, aesthetic, and social needs have become as large as (if not larger than) industries that meet the basic needs for physical survival, such as food and housing.

These new industries provide unlimited potential for traditionally undervalued talents to become useful and desirable. For example, interpersonal and intrapersonal talents became very valuable as the counseling industry expanded; all sorts of therapy, personal coaching, and interpersonal communication skills became highly valuable. Artistic talents have become more valuable as more people consume arts in various forms, including visual arts, video games, aesthetically appealing devices and furniture, artisan food, and films. Similarly, the ever-expanding television and video industry has created opportunities for individuals talented in storytelling, acting, and being funny. In other words, some traditionally useless talents have become useful (Zhao, 2018c).

Under the big umbrella of 21st century skills (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2007; Trilling & Fadel, 2009) are a host of skills and characteristics that have not been considered important before: communication, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2011; European Communities, 2006; Trilling & Fadel, 2009). There are numerous other skills, abilities, and characteristics proposed to be valuable in the new age that have not been valued in traditional education: dispositions (Costa & Kallick, 2013), creativity and innovation (Florida, 2012; Wagne...